Finding Nemo

Winter storm Nemo is just starting to arrive.  The ducks don’t seem to mind.

Like Snow off a Duck’s Back

Well, one of them might mind a little bit…

Captions are welcome in the comments section below.

 

First Snow 2012

They weren’t the first snowflakes we’ve seen this year, but the first real snow arrived today.  It’s been falling gently since this morning and we’re at about 3/4″ so far.  I know it won’t last through the week, but it’s peaceful and beautiful right now.  Here are a few pics from around the farm.

Not quite enough to cover the ground yet.

Boer goats aren’t especially fond of snow.

The ducks don’t seem to mind, however.

Zip is warm in his blanket – he’s hard to keep weight on.

Jasper, on the other hand, has a thick fleece of his own.

State Fair Time

Many kids had their first week of school last week, as did ours.  However, as homeschoolers, we can be a bit creative in how we spend those days.  Last week, from Tuesday through Labor Day, the kids hit science hard… animal science.  They did this through their participation in the Hopkinton State Fair in Contoocook, NH.  This was the capstone event after a year of hard work with animals, crafts, and other 4H and farm endeavors.  All that effort really paid off!

Our 8yo son’s big project this year has been his chickens.  If you’ve read our blogs, you know that he runs the egg business on the farm.  Since he is too young this year to show animal projects with 4H, he entered his barred rock rooster in the open class… and won best in show!  We’ll add pictures later of him holding his rooster and ribbon, but here are a few we’ve already downloaded.

Sister helping to get the rooster washed for the fair.

First Place!

His sisters also won blue ribbons for their duck pairs, with Hana winning “Best pair of ducks” overall.

Friday was the horse show, and Holly was blessed to have her coach, Janine, from Gelinas Farms volunteer to spend the day with her.  Janine’s biggest challenge was not helping with getting Zip ready (4H rules state that the kid does all the work), but she really helped out with last-minute coaching tips.

All that coaching made a difference, and Holly ended up winning Grand Champion for her class!

Saturday was the 4H goat show, and the girls really enjoyed doing that for the first time – they earned blue ribbons in several events, with Holly and Ruby edging out Hana and Samy at the end.

Sunday and Monday topped off the long weekend, with pack and obstacle courses, knowledge tests and a quiz bowl, volunteering at the 4H exhibits and food stands, and lots of feeding, cleaning, and talking to the public.  The kids had earned enough ribbons to fill their walls (and enough premiums to treat themselves and their animals to some new gear).  By the time we pulled out of the fair Monday evening, we were all ready for a rest!

Chuck the Chicken Duck, Part II

A while back, one of the kids wrote a blog post about “Chuck the Chicken Duck,” one of our Araucanas who felt more comfortable with the ducks than her own flock.

Today as we were cleaning the barn stall the ducks stay in at night, we found Chuck inside.  Normally, she lays her daily egg in one of the nesting boxes.  However, Midnight started setting yesterday (Katy has already been setting in the other box since the beginning of the month), so now both boxes are occupied.

We tried to shoo Chuck out the door to keep her from disturbing them.  Every time we did, she ran back in, or flew over the door or stall wall.  She was very determined, and agitated that she didn’t have a place to lay her egg.  We finally gave up, figuring that the ducks would scare her away and Chuck would find somewhere else.  The ducks are quite grumpy when setting, and aggressive at driving intruders away.

Sure enough, as Chuck hopped up on the nesting boxes, Midnight chased her away.  But Katy evidently is more patient, and we returned from a wheelbarrow dumping to find this:

Katy is quite the patient one.  We’ll wait till she makes her daily jaunt off the nest to eat and drink to get Chuck’s egg…

Summer Approaches

Summer is arriving at the Flying T.  Here are some recent pics that tell a story about what that means on the farm.

It’s been really rainy lately, but today we have a good bit of sun… just in time for our son’s baseball game!

The ducklings are now a month old.  Just before the three week point, one of the other ducks (Mocha) adopted them as her own. Unfortunately, this meant that she stepped off her own nest a week early, so we lost a clutch of 20.

However, she has been a great mother, and guards over them dutifully so that they can eat, drink, and swim… and take naps in the sunlight outside the barn.

For the past week, Mocha has been bringing the brood on a field trip each morning down to the beaver pond.  They spend most of the day there, swimming and eating bugs and weeds, then waddle back to the barn in the afternoon.

Try to find her if you can… this pic was taken with my phone, so the resolution isn’t the best.  Once you think you’ve found her, look below.  You should be able to imagine Mocha’s blurry brown and white form with a mass of ducklings swimming in front.  There also is a brood of wild Mallards sharing the pond, and we’re hoping that another of our Muscovy hens, Sunset, is sitting on a clutch hidden nearby.

Katy was the next to start her nest in the barn.  She’s been on for about a week, so about 27 days left in her vigil before the peeps start happening.

Summer means that the grass is growing quickly, especially with all of our rain.  This gets the horses frisky.

The grass has been too wet to mow around the house, but with a bit of help from the temporary electric fence we use when trailering, we found a greener solution to the lawnmower.

Still, there’s plenty of work to be found.  I’m a bit behind in putting away wood.  The good thing is that we have a good bit left over from last year.  Here’s the current pile I need to split, and I’ve got another cord lying in the woods right now waiting for me to cut into logs and drag out.

After an hour or so of work, I’ve got a good pile of cut wood waiting for the kids to start stacking (and still a whole lot more to split)!

More to come!

Ducklings at 1 Week

The ducklings hatched one week ago, and their rate of growth is impressive.  Here are photos from yesterday, when Midnight took them for their first field trip to the dandelion patch just outside the barn.

Midnight leads her brood of 17. She seemed to be quite happy to get out as well, snapping at insects and sampling vegetation.

The grass looks a lot taller when little ducklings are in the middle of it!

The ducklings enjoyed their first nibbles of grass and dandelions.

Duckling fuzz proves to be effective camouflage among dandelions.

All this sight-seeing is tiring. Ducklings stop for a rest.

With the field trip over, the ducklings were a bit slow to follow, so momma duck did a little chastising.

Does this spark any early memories of your own field trips or vacations?  If so, please leave a comment – we’d love to hear about your adventures.

Thanks for visiting, and please stop by again soon.  We’ll keep you updated as God continues to bless us!

P.S. The kids discovered this morning that Midnight is already starting her next clutch!

New Life at the Flying T

Spring is the season of new life.  After the long harsh winter (well, not this year!), the ground thaws, the trees bud, and most animals begin to raise their new young.  This week, a bit late in the spring, brought the first births from the livestock at the Flying T, courtesy of our flock of Muscovy Ducks. Midnight was the first of our flock to begin sitting on a clutch of about 20 eggs in the second week of April.  It is quite likely that those eggs are not just hers, but those of some of the other hens, as the ducks will lay an egg over the course of a week or so before sitting on them.  Other ducks often are stimulated by the sight of those eggs to lay their own in the same place.  In this case, they chose to lay in one of the nesting boxes I made out of recycled pallets. The eggs don’t begin to develop until she sits on them for an extended period of time.  Once she does so, she will stay on the nest for the next ~35 days straight, leaving only for a short time each day for food and water before returning to incubate and guard her clutch.  Our kids often helped her to minimize this time by offering food and water to her in the nest. Anticipation grew at the Flying T as the time neared, and early this week the kids ran in from their morning chores to announce excitedly that the hatch had begun.  “We can hear the eggs peeping!” one of our daughters exclaimed. The hatch took a while – duck eggs are thick and it is quite an athletic feat to break out from one – but in a bit more than a day we were rewarded by the sight of new yellow fuzz: Doc, our drake, was wise enough to observe from a distance while remaining wary of Midnight’s wrath and warning hisses when he got too close.  Zip the quarter horse would also lean over from time to time to see what was going on. Muscovy Ducks are the best mothers of the domestic varieties, but after a bit over two days, Midnight decided that no more time could be spent hatching – the ducklings needed food and water.  Two ducklings were still slowly pushing their way out, but life is not always fair.  Midnight very purposely smashed the remaining two hatching ducklings, then pushed her brood down to the stable floor, maintaining a protective umbrella over them as they adapted to the new world.

Soon, the young ducklings braved the light and began moving a short distance away to eat and drink, and we were finally able to count them all – 17 birds in a variety of patterns.  We’re very excited to see what colors they develop!

 And… in a few weeks, we’re expecting the next brood from Mocha, who earlier in the month chose one of the quartered poly drums I salvaged as the site for her nest.

Spring is in the Air

Spring is in the air here at the Flying T.

Our resident Boer Goats, Jessie and Gracie, are off at another farm for a month or so in the hopes that they make very close friends with the buck there.  That would bring us kids in September.  In their place, we welcomed two more 4-month-old full-blood Boer does, Ruby and Samy (Samantha).

The Muscovy ducks started laying a few weeks ago, but weren’t sitting, so we ended up collecting a lot of them.  They’re not bad eating and very good for cooking.  On Monday, however, Midnight got the urge and has been faithfully attending a nesting box full  of eggs ever since.  If all goes well, we should be seeing our first batch of ducklings mid-May.

One thing that hasn’t been here at the farm is much in the way of rain.  That, and a dearth of snow this year, means the ground is a lot dryer than normal.  We’ve done some improvement to the soil – lime in the fall and manure in the spring.  But the grass isn’t growing very quickly yet up here or anywhere in our neighborhood up here on the hill.

I overseeded the pasture with with a mix of Orchardgrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, hybrid Fescue, and White Clover right before what was supposed to be a pretty good rain, but it never happened.  Instead, the chickens have had a bit of a feast – an expensive one.  Hopefully we get some rain tonight.

The Winter Rye we planted as a cover crop in the vegetable garden, on the other hand, is quite healthy and ready to be tilled under so we can plant our lettuce, broccoli, and the like.

The drought hasn’t seemed to bug the apples or the peaches, though.  And so far it looks like they survived both our 1st attempt at pruning and some voracious Ruffed Grouse.

The berry bushes are starting to sprout as well, and if we can keep the chickens and goats out of them, hopefully we’ll have another plentiful harvest like last year.

And back in the house, our seed starter setup is working just peachy, with the tomato plants just about ready to transplant into 4″ pots.  They’ve actually done so well that we’ll probably end up selling some of them because we can’t use half of them.

So, all is well here on the farm, but we sure are praying for rain!

Night Pics

My daughter and I snuck in after bedtime to take some pics of the barn at night.

Hey, we're trying to sleep in here!

Ducks roosting up for the night

Zip savoring his hay

...while Jasper is already done with his food.

While we were out, the ducks decided to take a midnight stroll

The goats were decidedly unhelpful with posing

Heading back in for the night

What’s your favorite thing about being outdoors at night?  Any great memories?

“Duck Fat” by our Guest Blogger

Our 13yo daughter graces us with another blog post today.

—————–

Established fact: Grown Muscovy Duck drakes are usually too heavy to get very far off the ground. Obviously, this goes for flying down, too. Doc, our drake, has problems with understanding this.

Doc, aka "Garfield."

While our 4 duck hens get to party on the barn roof, Doc is left all alone, on the ground. He’s too fat to get anywhere. This has earned him the nickname of “Garfield”. Then, oh joy, we got Sunset and Saphira, two younger Muscovy girls who have not yet gotten their flight feathers. Now Doc has someone to play with.

Unfortunately, the duo is learning to fly. Doc watches wistfully as they get farther and farther off the ground. They are soaring high above his golden record of 3 feet.

Sunset (front) and Saphira (back)

Then Doc discovered a secret. By hopping to the lower roost, and flying clumsily the rest of the way, he could get to the wall where his girls spend the night. It was only a matter of time before he discovered the ladder.

And then, he did.

We were making applesauce. After putting the mixture into the food strainer, we are left with warm skins and cores. A little mushy, but wonderful smelling. The horses absolutely love this. We have figured out the safe way to give it to them is being on the other side of the fence, preferably with the apple mush in a bucket. At least, if you’re the type of person who values all five fingers.

I don't have a picture of Jasper chasing apple peels, but he looks something like this.

For the daredevil, the unsafe way to give it to them is when they are in the pasture, or you are actually in their stall, and you are giving it on the palm of your hand. This results in getting chased back to the gate. A horse in full gallop is probably going to beat a person on foot.

So we walked into the barn. I shined my light on the ladder to the loft to see if the barn cat would favor us with a visit. Instead of a large black cat, I saw a large white and gray duck. You guessed it, Doc.

He had apparently hopped up the ladder, one rung at a time, and was on one of the highest rungs. He had forgotten about how when he lands he falls on his face most of the time. At this hight, he might break his beak.

I climbed up the ladder thinking, Hey, I’ll just carry him down. No big deal. I climbed up the ladder, and reached for the chest. At a startled hiss, I decided that carrying a 25-pound flailing duck down a ladder is most likely not the best idea. So, I sent my sister back to the house while I held one hand on Doc’s chest and the other on his wings to keep him from flying, or as Woody from “Toy Story” would say it, “Falling, with style!”

Dad came in, reached up, grabbed the unsuspecting duck’s legs, flipped him upside down, and set him in the duck stall. Doc hated the flip-upside-down-thing. He was helpless at the time, and I don’t think he will be climbing up the ladder anytime soon.